Johnny Carson was revered for his impeccable comic timing. It was "so precise," wrote one newspaper in his obituary, "that we wouldn't be surprised to find buried in his skull a quartz crystal." And why might that be? Perhaps because Johnny Carson was a drummer. In drumming, after all, timing is everything.

The King of Late Night used to play his Ludwig kit at home to relax, but he took it seriously — and he was good! It was Carson who thought up that little one-bar snare roll at the beginning of Paul Anka's Tonight Show theme, and it was he, a huge jazz fan, who ensured his favorite drummers — Buddy Rich, Max Roach — were booked on the show.

In fact, comedy and drumming are linked in ways that go beyond the incidental. And it's not just the perennial popularity of "drummer jokes." (What's the difference between a drummer and a savings bond? One will mature and make money.)

After a quick think I came up with a dozen comedians — including Carson and, well, one Muppet — who were also percussionists. (Or, in a couple of cases, drummers who happened to be funny.) The question, then: why is that?

Is it the drummer's subordinate place on the stage — seated, hidden behind a kit well toward the back while the sexier instruments strut their stuff — that sees them translating humility into clownish attention seeking or sharp-witted cynicism? Or does it simply have to do with the essential importance of spot-on timing in both music and comedy? Either way, it's hard not to notice how many slapstickers double as stick slappers in their spare time.

Putting up W’s How is it that the least popular and possibly worst chief executive in American history has inspired no lasting impersonations?

Vegas and Jungleland Paul Shaffer is a happenin’ cat. Pick an It Moment from pop culture over the past 30 years and Shaffer was there. He was an original band member on Saturday Night Live . He played hapless promo guy Artie Fufkin in This Is Spinal Tap . Disco? He co-wrote “It’s Raining Men.” And he helped David Letterman break ground as his glittery, ironic bandleader/sidekick.

Newman's own Among Shawn Levy's books is one of my favorite film bios, King of Comedy , with crazy-guy Jerry Lewis, so show-off goofy and schmaltzy, spilling all on every exuberant, excessive page.

Mr. Peepers in Mumbai Here's something Chris Kattan probably rarely hears in real life: "In Night at the Roxbury, you were awesome!" Such, however, is the encomium proffered by two young Indian fans toward the beginning of IFC's somewhat random but not altogether terrible new mini-series Bollywood Hero .

Review: Land of the Lost Even Matt Lauer deserves a better fate than to watch his career die at the hands of Brad Silbering.

Review: Saturday Night Actor James Franco’s debut feature, a behind-the-scenes look at the December 6, 2008, episode of Saturday Night Live , is kind of like Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil with less music and more fart jokes.

Special delivery For the last two decades, comedian and SNL alum Norm MacDonald has been firing off on pop culture and sharing life observations with his disarming deadpan delivery and signature subtleties through a stoner Canadian accent and nasal drawl.

Interview: Steve Martin, banjo extraordinaire I remember watching Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy on a crinkly VHS tape, while sitting on my parent’s bedroom floor. I was just a little fat kid at the time. My parents were at work, as they often were, and my older sister, my only sibling, had just married her high school sweetheart and moved two miles away.

INSIDE THE TEDXDIRIGO CONFERENCE | September 14, 2011 I arrived at TEDxDirigo on September 10 feeling rather less than confident about the state of world. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 — and the awful decade that unspooled from that sky-blue morning — was on my mind.